There was a time when science didn't reign triumphant. In that time, science seemed to score more triumphs.

Scientists are humans and thus no less prone to error than, say, literature professors or priests. It's true those last two vocations have committed crimes against their flocks, and why would science be any different now that it demands the same obedience the gullible once gave high art or faith?

These days, many cloak science and its practitioners in the exalted, infallible material once reserved for artistic and ecclesiastical gentry. It's as if science is immune.

So whatever happened to the days when it provided us immunity? As Chris Rock used to say (in a NSFW gem) whatever happened to vaccines? Why is everything about managing what afflicts us instead of ending it?

Repeating, for all who missed it: scientists have resurrected one of man's great killers.

There's a lab that could have used a J. Robert Oppenheimer to cry out, "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

I realize long accepted scientific principles like chromosomes are so Lombrosian today, but common sense once seemed a bulwark against madness. That perception's been eroding for some time, though. It's been 30 years, for instance, since the great Bill Murray told an academic cop, "back off, man, I'm a scientist."

I remember reading The New York Times back in the day when it had a gripping story. And the story concerned a debate about whether the smallpox virus should be eradicated.

Only scientists and abstract theorists could consider such a discussion reasonable. Only a society cowed and enthralled by "science" could allow such discussions (along with the pretension anyone knows if the virus remains contained) to linger til the present day.

The definition of insanity is a human keeping their most lethal enemies alive out of some conception doing so is sane.

Somehow, the arrogance of science and the awe the public has of it have created a perfect storm. Those who should know better insist they do even while demonstrating a curious indifference or ignorance of certain disaster.

A case in point here would be the introduction of killer bees to the New World. A scientist brought killer bees to Brazil. Did so rather recently and by plane, of course, because no one on a ship crossing the Atlantic would be stupid enough to carry a cargo of killer bees.

Buzzing, swarming insects in great numbers are hard to control - a fact so obvious only a scientist could overlook or dismiss it as some inferior layman's concern. After all, what sort of dolt stands against the introduction of a more aggressive, less productive sort of honey producer?

Science today struts as gospel in part because faith in theory displaced gospel. If man's advancement required a skeptical attitude toward faith - and since the French Revolution, that's been leftist gospel - why does it require a suspension of skepticism toward science? Especially when "science" seems out to get you by keeping smallpox around?

Once upon a time skepticism was the soul of science; now skeptics are allegedly cranks. The inversion of science and religion, experiment and miracle, might make sense if people benefited. But if people are liable to be victims, should we imagine a world where's there's no test tubes?